It Dosen't Matter Anymore

Today's blog title was taken from Buddy Holly's last song of the same title. I thought I will write something about my cancer for those readers who are new to my blog. Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) or commonly known as kidney cancer is not a common type of cancer and forms about less than 2% of total cancer cases. More prone to males above the ages of 40 years old.

According to the Journal of Oncology (1999;17:2530-40), RCC is a life-threatening malignant disease for which available therapy is inadequate. In one review of 690 patients enrolled in therapeutic trials for metastatic disease, the median survival was 10 months, with a 2-year survival of only 45% for those in the best prognostic category. RCC demonstrates high levels of resistance to standard chemotherapeutic and hormonal agents, with response rates typically less than 10%. Data has not changed since then.

Kidney cancer is quite different from the other type of cancers because it does not respond well to chemotherapy and radiation. Hence all my 7 doctors (oncologists and urologists) did not recommend it as a standard treatment. Based on what my doctors tells me, there are no conventional treatment available as of now. Whatever treatment is just to lengthen the life of a patient. As you would recall in one of my recent post, a lengthening of life of say 3 months is considered very good in allopathic medicine during a clinical trial in England. The median survival of 10 months is considered good because my urologist tells me that all his patients died within 6 months. Even for good prognosis cases, you are looking at 2 years survival. Of course, I just passed my 2 years which is very good considering I did not do any conventional treatment. Honestly, I did not think I would survive that long when I first started.

So what can I do when my options are so limited in allopathic medicine? For one, I just continue to track developments in allopathic medicine and hope. Meanwhile, I did come across some new developments. I did talk about a Korean Traditional Medicine called Rhus Verniciflua Stokes which has shown good promise for RCC based on two case studies. On Tuesday HITV (Human Initiated Therapeutic Vaccine) was again featured in some local newspapers. So happens the lady mentioned in the article is a classmate of my sister and I have also met her before. I am happy for her. A response rate of 50% is really good (based on 8 Malaysian cases) while in Japan, a HITV study on 26 patients with different advanced cancers (breast, cervical, gastro-intestinal, lung, lymphoma, ovarian, pancreatic, prostate and renal) showed 80 per cent of the patients demonstrated a complete response to the initial treatment, while 50 per cent have remained disease-free. That's 40% and I consider that as a very good success rate. I will have a word with the doctor.

Meanwhile, I will still rely on alternative therapies for whatever it's worth. I think 95% of all cancer patients who uses alternative therapy have tried conventional medication but did not work for them. It dosen't  matter anymore which route one takes so long as it works for them.

A Prayer For A Country

No matter which religion you belong to, I hope you could spent a little time to say some prayers for the people of Thailand to overcome this flood crisis. Thank you.